MRC Special Report. "Megaphone for a Dictator: CNN's Coverage of Castro's Cuba, 1997-2002."*** CNN's Havana bureau now has a five-year track record that can be evaluated, and the results are not good. Media Research Center analysts reviewed all 212 stories about the Cuban government or Cuban life that were presented on CNN's prime time news programs from March 17, 1997, the date the Havana bureau was established, through March 17, 2002. MRC's analysis found that instead of exposing the totalitarian regime that runs Cuba, CNN has allowed itself to become just another component of Fidel Castro's propaganda machine. ***
Leader of unprecedented petition drive expected to meet with Jimmy Carter during Cuba visit *** Vicky Huddleston, chief of the U.S. Interests Section here, said the sheer number of signatures gathered demonstrate a change is under way. "There is hope that President Carter's visit will have an impact on Project Varela," Huddleston said. "I think Oswaldo Paya is right, that people have begun to lose their fear."
Named for the Rev. Felix Varela, a Cuban independence hero, the petition drive differs greatly from Paya's first one, which simply called for a national dialogue between the government and its opponents. During that effort in 1991 Paya gathered signatures only in Havana, from his home. Although Paya's group first talked about Project Varela in 1996, it wasn't until the last year that volunteers begin collecting signatures in earnest.***